There were not ten good men in all of Sodom and Gomorrah so it was destroyed. I think it’s possible there wasn’t even one good man in Sodom and Gomorrah because Abraham’s nephew Lot really comes off as kind of an awful guy. When two angels come into town, Lot insists that they stay with him because it’s not safe in the town square. Once they’re there, all the men in the town get together and decide they want some sweet, non-consensual angel-sex and demand Lot hand over the two travelers. Lot refuses, offering in stead his two virgin daughters. The men refuse the offer and start trying to break in so the angels strike them all with blindness and tell Lot to get his family out of the city.
It really seems like Lot could have at least tried giving away like some goats or silver pieces or something before he jumps straight to offering up his two daughters. I guess we don’t know the details of what happened, but that seems unsavory to me.
More importantly, this tends to be the story that comes to mind when we think about the Bible and homosexuality and I think that’s kind of ridiculous. Now there are certainly parts of the Bible that speak directly to sexual issues, but if I were a gay man, I feel like I would have a very important burning question upon hearing this tale connected to my orientation.
“Who do you think I am in this story?”
I guess the men in Sodom and Gomorrah must be into guys because they want to have sex with the angels who come, but that’s not why they’re struck blind. They’re punished because they want to break into Lot’s house to gang-rape the angels. To cite the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as biblical condemnation of homosexuality is incredibly offensive because to do so is to refuse to differentiate between gay sex and rape. It’s like saying the story of God drowning the Egyptian army in the Red Sea is about how it’s a sin to ride chariots.
Anyway, Lot tries to warn the guys engaged to his daughters that the city is about to be destroyed, but they don’t believe him, so in the end it’s just him, his wife and their two very forgiving daughters. His wife looks back at the city as they flee though and is turned to a pillar of salt. Later, they’re living in a cave and the two girls get Lot drunk and sleep with him to keep the family line alive.
Meanwhile, Abraham and Sarah move to the Negev which is desert just north of the sea of Aram. The same thing happens here as happened in Egypt; Abraham tells Sarah to tell everyone they’re siblings, the king takes a shine to her and then God curses the king for carrying on with a married woman. The king, Abimelech, is a nice enough guy and fears the Lord, so God tells him what’s going on in a dream before anything too bad happens to him. He is understandably upset with Abraham, who waves off his protests explaining that Sarah really is his half-sister as well as his wife so he technically didn’t lie at all. Thanks Abraham, I’m sure that made Abimelech feel much better.
Now that Abimelech knows that Abraham is favored by God though, he can’t really do anything but be nice to him, so he sets him up with livestock, cash and property to apologize for taking his wife, and asks him to look favorably on his kingdom. A little while later, Abraham’s having trouble with Abimelech’s servants running him off from the wells in the area so they get together and hammer out a treaty which identifies a new well that Abraham just dug and confirms that it is his, witnessed by Abimelech himself and sealed with seven lambs from Abraham’s flock. The well was called Beersheba.
Beersheba is still a major city in Israel today. It’s been the biggest source of water in southern Israel for thousands of years.
Isaac is also born around this time, just like God promised over and over again. During the celebration of Isaac’s birth though, Sarah says that Ishmael was mocking so, in keeping with her history of being a jerk to Hagar, she insisted that Abraham send them both away.
Abraham was not happy about it, but God told him to go ahead and do it and that He would look after Ishmael. Hagar and Ishmael wandered out in the desert for a long time, but God provided for them and promised to make Ishmael the father of a great nation.
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